How RoamSonar makes money
Short version: when you buy an eSIM through one of our links, the provider pays us a commission. You pay the same price as going direct — usually less, because our links carry verified discount codes. That's the whole business model. The long version, including exactly what we log and what we refuse to do, is below.
Affiliate commissions on click-outs
Every 'Get plan' button goes through our own /go link before landing on the provider's checkout. That hop is how the provider knows the sale came from us — the only place money enters the picture. Commissions come out of provider margin, never added to your price. If you close the tab and buy elsewhere, we earn nothing, and that's fine.
Where coupons fit in
Providers sometimes give us codes — including Simbye's ESM15 and Surfroam's ESIMADVICE10 — because affiliate sales are worth it to them. We publish every code we're allowed to, with a real verification date. Codes are applied to prices BEFORE our rankings run, so a plan competes at the price you'd actually pay. A struck-through price here is always list price minus a verified code — never an invented 'was'.
See all codes →Free for you, always
RoamSonar has no paywall, no premium tier, no account, and no plan to add them. Comparison only works if everyone can see everything. If we ever charge for anything, it won't be access to prices or rankings.
Rankings are never for sale
No provider can pay for position — not a badge, not a 'featured' slot, not a nicer score. Fastest, Cheapest and Recommended are fixed published formulas with their point weights on the record, and commissions are not an input to any of them. If a partner ever made placement a condition of working with us, we'd drop the partner.
Read the actual formulas →What we log when you click out
When you click 'Get plan', we record: which plan and provider, which country page you were on, an anonymous random session token, the referring page, a device class (mobile / desktop / bot), and a timestamp. That's the complete list. No name, no email, no account, no precise location — we never ask, so we can't log them. The anonymous token counts 'clicks that became sales' in aggregate; it identifies a browser session, not a person.
No accounts
Nothing to sign up for, nothing to leak.
Anonymous session tokens
Random tokens for counting, not identifying.
No personal data sold — or held
We can't sell what we never collect.
Our partners today
RoamSonar currently works with Affiliate partner Simbye and Affiliate partner Surfroam. Simbye plans come from its live package feed; Surfroam comparison rows are calculated from its public Shopify balance variants and destination rates. Both may pay us a commission on sales. Neither has a say in how plans rank, and both receive the same treatment — including '—' wherever source data is silent.
Fair questions
Do I pay more when I use your links?
No. You pay the provider's price, and where we have a verified code — like ESM15 — you pay less than list. Commissions come out of the provider's side, not yours.
Does a bigger commission move a provider up your rankings?
No. Commission rates aren't an input to any formula — the three sorts use price, trip fit, activation and plan features, published with exact point weights on our how-we-rank page. A provider paying us double would rank identically.
Why do you list a smaller set of providers?
We only list feeds we can verify and re-sync every 30 minutes. A smaller honest set beats stale scraped price tables. More are in review, and each gets this same disclosure.